Race & Immigration

DETROIT — On a cloudy Sunday afternoon, Janet Webster Jones, a lifelong Detroiter and owner of Source Booksellers, recalls a time when black Detroit residents were unable to invest in their own city. “Detroit went through a period where outside investors would not come to Detroit for reasons of race and fear of a place where people don’t look like them,” explained Jones. “And the banks wouldn’t give any money to the black and brown Detroiters who wanted to invest in the city.”

Jones felt that this had to do with representation in the bank system. “There was a time when we had absolutely no bank tellers of color,” she recalled. “Then Dr. Charles H. Wright went on a campaign to get banks to hire black people as tellers at least, which is the lowest level of employment.”

However, despite the adversities faced by blacks in Detroit, many still managed to create independent communities.

Ed and Naiah Holsey walked into her sister’s engagement party, hoping no one would make a scene about them being hand-in-hand. “Why didn’t you come alone?” her sister asked. The Holseys looked around the room to see her Korean family with disapproving glares and frowning faces. “That was two years ago, which means we were married for 10 years when that happened,” Naiah Holsey said. “And they still couldn’t accept that I married a black man.”

Interracial, opposite-sex married couple households grew from 7 percent in 2000 to 10 percent in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The numbers of Chinese students, as the largest group of international students in the U.S., has increased dramatically in recent years, according to the Institute of International Education. The institute said that from 2005 to 2009 India sent the most students to the U.S. From 2010 to 2016, China became the largest source of international students in the U.S.

When President Trump signed an executive order in January attempting to ban travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, Muslim students on college campuses — including at Michigan State University — responded with protests. Federal courts blocked the order, along with another signed in March. But Trump’s efforts have created uncertainty for some students.

Hispanics are the largest minority group in the United States, yet many Hispanics “do not identify with the current racial categories,” according to the Pew Research Center. That’s because the term — often used interchangeably with “Latino” — covers people from a sprawling geographic area who may have distinct cultural differences.

Fifty years from now, America’s population will have unprecedented diversity. By 2065, the number of immigrants or people with immigrant parents in the U.S. will go from about a quarter of the population to just over one third, according to Pew Research Center.

We spoke with Katie Apolinario, a Virginia-based Filipino-American human resources professional for Hilton, to get an inside look at the professional life of a member of the group closest to bridging the wage gap with white men.

At Michigan State University, 5.8 percent students at the university are of an Asian heritage, according to the Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives 2015-16 annual report on diversity. That’s about 2,500 students. To understand what it’s like to be from an Asian racial background at Michigan State University, we interviewed three Asian American students — Sho Nakashima, Annie Chen, and Sarah Vang — and a student from China, Lei Xu. “For me, the most personally upsetting has been the stereotype that Asian immigrant families are privileged and wealthy,” said Nakashima, an MSU graduate who studied social relations and policy and neuroscience. He is a first-generation American.

The Hmong are one of the most recent Asian immigrant groups to come to the United States. Although there are Hmong people living in Thailand, Vietnam and China, nearly all of the Hmong who settled in the U.S. are from Laos. Hmong and other immigrants were assisted by the passage of the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975 in their efforts to relocate after the Vietnam War. Data from the 2010 census shows that the U.S. Hmong population rose from 45,443 in 2000 to 66,181 in 2010, an increase of 46 percent. U.S. Census data estimates that there are more than 250,000 Hmong living in the United States with more than 5,000 living in Michigan.

Environmental News from Great Lakes Echo

By MAX JOHNSTON
Capital News Service
LANSING — Many people consider carp to be a “trash fish,” but fly fishing for carp is popular in northern Michigan. This year though, guides have cancelled trips and lost thousands of dollars because they can’t find the fish.

By CARIN TUNNEY
Capital News Service
LANSING — Lake trout make noise in bed, according to new research by Great Lakes scientists. The species commonly growl, snap, quiver and thump while spawning, the study found.

In Case You Missed It

Summertime poses as the perfect opportunity for students to make and earn money for the up-and-coming school year but with more and more summer internships failing to offer compensation for their time students can struggle to make ends meet. “When I first got my internship I was so excited,” said Michigan State University pre-med student Ali Beydoun, “then found out it was unpaid and I got a little worried.